Pause in AstraZeneca vaccine trial not necessarily a setback: UK health minister

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Britain’s Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said that AstraZeneca’s decision to pause its coronavirus vaccine trials was a challenge but would not necessarily set back efforts to develop a vaccine.

“It is obviously a challenge to this particular vaccine trial,” Hancock said on Sky News when asked about the pause in the trial. “It’s not actually the first time this has happened to the Oxford vaccine.”

Asked whether it would set back the vaccine development process, he said: “Not necessarily, it depends on what they find when they do the investigation.”

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